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More than two years after China's lunar rover got away to a wonky
start on the surface of the moon, the country's National Space
Administration has released the stunning hi-def pictures it took.

On December 14, 2013, Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit" became the third
unmanned spacecraft to land on the moon. But within a month, the
rover started having some problems preparing for the lunar
nights, and was losing its precious solar power supplies.

It stopped moving on January 25, 42 days into a three-month
mission.

By mid-February, Chinese officials had to face the fact that Jade
Rabbit wasn't going anywhere further but remarkably, it kept
transmitting information until the end of October last year.

Nevertheless, while it never quite managed to traverse the three
square kilometres intended, Jade Rabbit still took load of snaps.
Up until now, the agency has only released a handful, but now
there's hundreds publicly available, and they're in spectacular
HD.

Here's the obligatory shot of Jade Rabbit's first donut as it
parts company with lander Chang'e:

Fortunately, Emily Lakdawalla from Planetary
Society has earned herself the gratitude of moon-gazers
everywhere by doing the hard work. She's collated hundreds of the
images into two subsets - 35 gigs worth - to make it easy.